


Herculean

by bee_kind



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Introspection, One-Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-04
Updated: 2015-03-04
Packaged: 2018-03-16 06:12:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3477473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bee_kind/pseuds/bee_kind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The art of forgetting was a herculean effort he had no strength for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Herculean

He knew the moment he saw Steve standing outside the observation, looking about ready to rip Fury’s head off that this was finally over. The cold rooms made of metal, the colder men that inhabited them, filling them to the brim, the feeling of empty that followed their leaving, the vast, bloody monotony of his life as a tool…  
  
Was finally over.   
But over didn’t mean free.

He was dangerous, this much he knew, and volatile as well. The agents at SHIELD couldn’t trust him as far as they could throw him, and considering he weighed a good 500 pounds, since much of his body had been reinforced with steel- that wouldn’t be very far. He’d watched them with dull cobalt eyes, still half-sure he’d imagined Steve and Fury, and that this was just an extremely vivid hallucination brought about by a Hydra drug. There were trigger words in his mind, key phrases that would cause him to black out, or go into a rampage, or forget.  
  
He wouldn’t mind forgetting.

 **  
**But forgetting meant losing context for everything he’d been through in the past seven decades, and he couldn’t afford to lose that.  
  
He didn’t deserve to forget. Despite his programming, despite what Steve told him, he knew that sometimes, when clarity was at its peak, he’d get a niggling feeling that what he’d done, what he’d continued to do was wrong, but he’d do nothing about it. He’d let himself sink back into complacency over and over again, without repercussions, until he could no longer afford to do so. He’d taken his comfort over hundreds of lives. And felt nothing.  The eyes of those he’d murdered- he refused to use the vocabulary Hydra had gifted him with. Eliminated. Crossed-Off. Neutralized. Those were words of forgiveness. He did not need forgiveness- their eyes were forever seared into his memory and they greeted him every morning.  
  
The art of forgetting was a herculean effort he had no strength for.    
  
He’d managed to block out most of his time inside the facility- faces faded easily, as did conversations. He’d stopped using his name, the one they’d used against him to form a sense of familiarity. He was James, now.  
  
Only James.   
James without a surname.  
James with no history.  
James without a nickname, because Bucky was a monster he had no time to tame.


End file.
